Hypno-anchor Trigger

Hypno-anchor trigger.  I love it when phrases like that come up naturally in conversation.  The discussion was about Alexander technique, and teaching dance, while this term is more closely associated with NLP and hypnotherapy.  The idea is that emotive states can be anchored in mind by particular associations and triggered later by recreating those stimuli.  In a way that speaks to the very heart of semiotics, in which signs refer to a complex meaning, and to the experience of art.

As a contact improv dancer, I have had countless experiences of gesture or touch triggering my emotions.  When my head is cradled, I surrender to childlike trust.  When my sternum is poked with an index finger, I shove it out in defiance.  An arm draped over my shoulder establishes camaraderie, while an arm around my waist invites closer intimacy.  I probably spent my first five years as a CI dancer, maybe longer, desensitizing myself to the hundreds of triggers my body has collected so that I could discover movement more complex than the emotionally obvious.

Today's conversation, though, was specifically about language as a trigger.  By speaking about the qualities of the movement desired, the teacher can create the sensation of the movement in him/herself if not in the students as well.  There is a wonderful feedback loop as well.  As the body remembers its actions, the language comes more easily to describe it, and the enhanced language further spurs the recalled mobility.  I wonder if athletes do this along with their visualizations, activating their whole brains to project peak performances.

I love language.  I come alert with new words, or uses of words, and love to play with descriptive imagery.  I am curious about the layering of associations and the surprises that occur when words leapfrog about in homophonic disarray.  A pun is fun, but not just that, a once a pun is time so fine upon a pen, O pen, open now to me thy mystery.... and I am off. Fluidity of language is like fluidity of form.  Triggered together,  they accelerate a mobility of feeling, a cascade of sensation inspiration.  All hypno-anchored, of course.